THE oft repeated claim by Tory prime minister Cameron that the coalition will not privatise the National Health Service has finally been exposed for what it is – a downright lie.
On the eve of today’s vote in parliament on the coalition’s health bill, previously secret e-mails have been produced under the freedom of information law that show conclusively that the government is in talks over the privatisation of 20 hospitals across the country.
The e-mails, obtained by the ‘Spinwatch’ organisation, detail meetings between the Department of Health, NHS managers, the management consultants McKinsey and the German company Helios.
According to these e-mails, the talks involved plans to bring in foreign-based private companies to take over the running of 20 hospitals.
In one e-mail McKinsey, the private consultancy that is acting as the go-between for the government and the international consortia keen to get their hands on the NHS, lays out the bottom line for these companies. They write:
‘International players can do an initiative if £500 million is on the table’, in addition these international players are demanding ‘a free hand on staff management’.
As for the NHS, these private companies are prepared to allow it to ‘keep real estate and pensions’.
How magnanimous these vultures are!
They are demanding that the coalition hand over the profitable provision of health care, profits that will be ensured through a policy of cutting wages and staffing levels, while leaving the NHS to pay for the bricks and mortar and keep responsibility for pension fund liabilities.
In other words, public money invested in the NHS will go to providing the infrastructure these companies need to make vast profits.
Anticipating the massive opposition from the working and middle classes who hold the NHS dear, McKinsey cautions the coalition to keep silent about this plan to hand over hospitals to for-profit private companies – they urge that the privatisation of the initial 20 hospitals should start ‘from a mindset of one at a time’.
The future for those hospitals that cannot produce a profit has also been revealed this week.
A report in the Independent newspaper reveals that managers at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are actively considering a plan to sell-off the major teaching hospital St Mary’s.
It says that the trust, which is bankrupt with debts of £100 million, is looking to flog St Mary’s, which occupies a prime site in Paddington, to property speculators.
When it comes to the banks, there is no limit to the amount of money available to bail them out of bankruptcy of their own making.
When it comes to the NHS, it is now either privatisation or being flogged off to property speculators.
The response of the leadership of the trade unions to the destruction of the NHS has been to evade any determined fight and attempt to divert the fight into an endless stream of protests and stunts.
On the eve of today’s vote Unison (the largest NHS union) has been holding a weekend of protest including candlelight vigils and leafleting.
None of these activities will deter the government from destroying the NHS in order to keep the profits flowing for the capitalist class.
The only way to defend the NHS from this immediate threat is to call every union member out immediately in a general strike that will bring down this government and replace it with a workers government that will guarantee the NHS.
We urge all workers and young people to come to the Young Socialists lobby of the TUC annual conference next Monday, to demand that these leaders either fight or get out and make way for a leadership that will.
